Goal Setting & Sketching out a New Plan

I’ve given myself a week completely off from training. I wasn’t able to totally enjoy it because the work week was horrendous, but still… it’s nice not to have life revolve around my workout for once!

On Sunday I headed out for my first workout back, and first ski workout in a really long time. Wow — talk about feeling awkward and unstable!! 🙂 I went for a little over 2 hours, nice and easy. My legs are completely recovered (at least I think). I don’t think they were ever really sore after the marathon, which is probably a sign that I was well prepared for the race. There’s nothing quite like that “unprepared/didn’t race smart” soreness you get after a marathon :).

I’m not sure what I’ll do today — 45-50 minutes double pole? Is that considered a wimpy workout? I have no idea. I’m used to having a day to day plan (with an end goal), so simply making up my workouts every day is a little hard for me 🙂 — especially when I don’t know what I should be doing, in the case of skiing! Oh well, I figure just getting out there and doing something every day is better than what I’ve done in the past (aka, very, very little).

On the subject of workout plans and goals…

I’m tentatively planning on 2 marathons next year, one in the Spring and one in the fall. Not sure which ones yet (Fargo again? That was a blast. Grandmas? TCM? A new fall marathon?). My time goals for the spring would be either a 2:52.30 or a sub 2:52, haven’t quite decided. There’s not a ton of difference between the two, but I feel the need to lock in a pretty specific goal :). If I could hit that, the goal for the fall marathon would be sub 2:50. I’m pretty excited about being able to make goals like that — I’m very lucky to be healthy and able to race fast. These goals are pretty agressive, though, so I know I’m going to have to work exponentially harder for every minute from now on — getting to the 2:50 mark is no small feat. I think I’ll contact Jenny again, see if she’d be up for training together. Some of the faster, long marathon pace stuff I’ll have to search for a partner — there’s enough of a difference between Jenny and I now (she’s a 3:01 marathoner) that I don’t think it’d work. That’s really sad :(…

I haven’t laid out a plan yet, and I don’t know if I will for a while. I’m a little burned out & need some time just to do “my thing” & to force myself to do workouts based on what I’m feeling that day. Although uncomfortable for me, it’s healthy. There’s only so long you can follow an intense plan day-by-day.

I’m leaning toward sticking to the same training plan, but I haven’t thought too much about it. I think it’s worked well for me so far. I guess I don’t even know what I’d switch to if I wanted to. I haven’t followed it from day 1 – the end yet (and maybe never will be able to?) — this year because of injury, previously because I decided to change to it half way through the cycle. So, I think my goal will be to attempt to follow it again, concentrating on having a few more weeks at the medium-high mile mark (85-90).

I also need to work to find a good balance between running and skiing. I’d like to concentrate more on skiing now that fall/winter is upon us, but would also like to keep up the mileage so I’m ready to train hard late winter/early spring when I need to. Question is, how much mileage is needed to prepare for a fast spring marathon? How much skiing can I get away with?